Points For Toothbrushing: The Gaming Speech Everyone Is Talking About
polycounter lvl 13
http://kotaku.com/5479125/points-for-toothbrushing-the-gaming-speech-everyone-is-talking-about
What are everyone's opinion on this? I find it kind of scary because in a lot of ways, I think he is right.
What are everyone's opinion on this? I find it kind of scary because in a lot of ways, I think he is right.
Replies
I didn't listen to the video (no audio here at work while the boss is behind me ha), so if my comment is completely whack, I apologize...
ha, well the speech is alot more about social gaming, and the turn the industry has taken in the last few years towards making everything more "real".
Well I will admit, I do enjoy some realism every now and then. They will never kill fantasy though. I think this realism kick is just the current fad, just like the uprising of zombie games. Nothing will ever take me away from my Oblivion, I don't care how real things get :P.
Marketing isnt some evil, malevolent science just because it deals a little in manipulation. The games he's talking about, webkins, that penguins thing, mafia wars, farmville -- they are fun. They're simply more profitable than other fun games because they're marketed more intelligently. There is no brainwashing or sublimininal messaging manipulation here, just catching on to what people are interested in spending money on and putting a product that clearly exhibits those traits on the market.
Are you forced to be a barnes and noble whateveritscalledclubmember, or use your frequent flyer miles, or report every charitable act you make on your taxes? A system like this works because most people want to sacrifice their privacy for the rewards they'll earn, i cant imagine it being an actual obligation.
If you really think advertising is pervasive and manipulative to the point that it is a problem, never use Google search again. After all, it is a service paid for by Google ads, not you.
But the video was very insightful into prospective future market trends, and not some dystopian future some people make it out to be. Thanks for the link.
Since when does growing vegetables count as fun? Its only because of the psychological aspects that people play it, or else it would just be growing fucking vegetables.
I'm not sure if some of his conclusions are that correct either, that these fads like facebook wont just die out(probably wont), that they arent just popular because they are new, and the similarities he eschews that are between them is just assumption and a could be a coincidence.
People are very resistant to change, he says he think it may cause people to behave better but I think it will cause them to behave worse, there are lots of cliques of subversive behaviours which people go out and get together and encourage one another(suicide sites, etc).
All the interconnectidness would make it harder for the overt top down control. From marketing and governments.
I do wonder though what happens when marketing reach's critical mass(I dont think it will though, the harder they push the more resistant people become).
There isnt really any magic tricks, phsycology or whatever with marketing though, they just really on two things, what people see, and what other people are doing.
Facebook became popular because people saw it and they encouraged other people to join it.
That lead generation thing isnt some clever trick, its just percieved value, they dont percieve much value in the game, they know there money is going to waste, as long as they think they are getting something else they dont mind. They will wise or tire of the con eventually.
Harvest moon is fun. I think I see what you're getting at though.
http://kotaku.com/5479966/why-we-play-games-and-why-we-grumble-about-them?skyline=true&s=i
pretty awesome article, but in reference to what you were saying they explain that games like farmville, and harvest moon and such are fun because of the control and organization you get. So like you say it's not the growing of the vegetables that is fun but the control over the situation that is.
Since when does pressing buttons to see images move on a screen count as fun? Its only because of the psychological aspects that people play videogames, or else it would just be wasting fucking time.
Anyway, I agree with Cybroxide on this one. Games like those are fun because you have so much control over what happens, plus, its pretty challenging to succeed (was in Harvest Moon for SNES anyway). I don't want to go buy a farm and raise shit (nor do i have the time), so I can do it in a video game. Same as any other game, I don't have magic to kill people with, so I do it in a video game :P
It's scary because it assumes that everyone involved in such manipulations has you or societies best interest at heart. That's just simply not true. What's scary is that throughout history those things that you have described have worked out organically, without individual level intention and motivations driving them. How often do people abuse poorly designed systems in games? In fact has there ever been a game system designed that doesn't have exploits? Also Marketing and Advertising have LONG since moved beyond just being about product awareness. It doesn't just "deal a little in manipulation" it IS manipulation. I think what this "metagame" trend really gets at is that competition gets more attention then even sex. Sex is really just an offshoot of competition anyway. However previously ad's were just static things, pictures, billboards, sound bites...Now, because the speed, availability, and interconnectedness of the internet you can make a game out of being advertised to, where people can be driven to consume more of your product and have the instant gratification of knowing they beat someone else and seeing it on a leader board rather than the implied success that comes with seeing a still image of the final result. Obviously not everyone is so wildly susceptible to competition as a manipulative force...but I know some people who have done some pretty stupid things in situations way more ridiculous than as part of some ad campaign because of their competitiveness. In fact I know people who's whole life is driven by competition, and if they're not winning at something than they're shitty. A lot of the time these are actually some of the most "successful" people, in terms of careers and wealth, while also being some of the most consistently unhappy.
I think the other reason it's scary is he completely ignores the fact that what he's talking about is actually a 1984 style security state with a cute, waving Farmville avatar instead of Big Brother. Constant monitoring of almost every aspect of life? We're just supposed to assume that all this information will only be used for good? Just because the ones doing the monitoring and collecting of the information are private entities instead of big scary governments really doesn't mean anything, and I would say increases the likelihood of them looking for potential purchasers of said information. "If you're not doing anything wrong then why should you worry?" Because the definition of "wrong" changes a lot, and for reasons that often have little to do with the reality of the action and everything to do with politics, influence, ignorance, and money. The problem with promoting "good behavior" through behavioral manipulation is that on the surface it's like an amusing way of tricking people into doing what you believe to be the right thing. That's the catch though, who defines this "right thing?" Is the right thing eating more fruit and vegetables? Perhaps...So go buy some Consolidated Fruit and Vegetable Multinational Incorporated's officially approved, double points earning, slave labor grown, maximum yum fruit and vegetable product. Is the "right thing" going to church? I'm actually not even going to touch that one....Is the "right thing" reporting your neighbor to the FBI for having Muslim friends? It's not so much that I think "metagames" are the real scary part of what he's talking about, my health insurace company already has a point system where I can get points for reporting that I walked for 30 minutes or ate X many servings of veg, and that eventually those points can be traded in for Ipods and shit. However there is no competition involved, and their system is not watching you all the time, you just report and it's on the honor system. I think the real scary part of the future he so gleefully describes is more that the real promise of technology is to turn life into a behaviorally conditioned game for clever, parasitic advertisers to take advantage of. (edit:Of course it already is to some extent...his example is just using the power of the internet and the miniaturization of computer technology to vastly increase the pervasiveness and power of the conditioning)
I agree with his whole point on divergence. Humans are naturally competitive, so we'll always have different versions of devices that do the exact same thing. It's the reason why we will never have just one modeling program, no matter how similar they are.
Anyway, you have never worked in advertising or spoken at length with anyone who has, or read any legit books on the subject. If marketing really was evil mind control marketers would be out of work. It's a misconception akin to thinking we all play with computers and press make art buttons all day.
Hehe, fair enough...no one would read that either :P
The point biggest point I caught onto from Jesse's presentation, was the untapped potential of these unexpected games he mentions.
I believe most of the gaming community's voice to this day isn't heard. Sure we hear about the main platform games, Assassin's Creed 2, MDW2, Bioshock etc but these represent a small portion of the gaming community.
A majority of games are played by players who will never log onto a forum to talk about it or wait in line till the release at midnight. And these players are not playing Fallout or Mass Effect, they are playing games like Bejeweled, Farmville, games they can pick up, play, leave and forget about within a few mins. These games are played by everyone, from serious gamers to the most casual of gamers.
I think a majority of modeler/gamers like ourselves have a hard time accepting these casual games because of the simplicity of them. We spend a crap load of time making and playing these great looking games and have X amount of players play it but while we did that, one person made a simple ass game that double amount of players play that game instead of our next gene game :poly127:
Jesse's studio Schell Games is literally 6 blocks away from my house here in Pittsburgh and I am hoping that I can take a tour with my teacher who works there sometime soon
Actually that's Huxley dystopian view.
It's scary because we are heading exactly that way. We are becoming a brainwashed society of consumers.
I actually lived in Orwell's world and Houxley's scares me a lot more.
Fair, I've never worked in Advertising. Although I have spoken with people who have and I've never heard them speak a good word about their experience, unless they were the one making the money off the ads.
Mind control is a silly straw dog. Behavioral conditioning and manipulation is as real as the sun shining in my window. Perhaps it's my misconception to believe that advertisers don't have my well being at heart, but it also seems like a pretty powerful misconception to believe that an industry which companies pour billions of dollars into in order to convince you why their Thing A is better than the other's Thing B...or why you should vote for one person and not another...has no real effect.
Well of course it has an effect, but that effect isn't to cause people to surrender their free will and buy what the man tells them. A salesman's goal is to get you to make a decision through persuasion, argument, charisma, etc. An advertisers is to get as big of a % of the public as they can to do the same thing.
If someone you know talks to you about how great some movie is, or argues with you about a political idea and brings up new insights you werent familiar with, are you afraid of being brainwashed? Why is it if someone carefully designs a billboard to try and communicate as many visual concepts as possible to you and as many people as they can you suddenly are?
We're artists, we know better than most people that visual communication is powerful, and symbols mean a lot, but that doesnt mean visual communication and symbols CONTROL PEOPLE'S BRAINS. They're simply a nonverbal version of your aunt telling you why you and some family should eat at red lobster instead of tgi fridays.
Well at least within my 4 walls I'm safe from all this crap right? I just pull the plug on the internet...Oh wait, Ubi's already working on the never-offline experience...
Just look at all the achievements crap that's in games nowadays. What's the point? to show off how much time you wasted away? Just think about it. That stuff is there for a reason or someone has been wasting a lot of developer time implementing all this.
And theres no way Im going to give you my money that is worth something that I can use to buy REAL things for your fake farmville money that has no value what so ever. I don't need to grow virtual plants to make myself feel like I'm in control over something, when I have control over my own life already.
This is a logically broken conclusion.
They are making us do something by abusing a natural, separately occurring part of our psychology?
You want to look good in front of your peers. You are competitive. Company A sees this and offers you a way to compete. You buy company A's product.
Did company A invent demand for their service, or did they provide a service there was demand for?
It's an insult to the general public's intelligence, many of whom are both farmville players and smarter than you are, to assume that your hobbies, interests, and recreation come from some kind of wellspring of intellectual superiority. You don't like farmville because you don't enjoy that kind of thing, not because you're some kind of superbrain. You waste your money on stupid shit too -- everyone does. I don't see where the sense of superiority is coming from.
Ah man, that has to be the best argument winner I have seen in years.
Some people are that addicted to games that they WILL pay for useless random shit though. I don't think it has anything to do with ads though
It's a terrible argument winner. The toilet paper company is wealthy because they know clean, decent people want to buy their product. So they advertise it as such.
Clean decent people, come here, we've got just the thing for you!
Firecracker identifies herself as a clean, decent person, so she buys the product they're shilling.
I think the problem here is that people are assuming all persuasively, well advertised products don't work. Just the opposite is true. All successful products work -- people play farmville because it is fun. People play farmville instead of other, equally fun games because it is brilliantly marketed.
...and the understanding of the very methods of conditioning and control which societies use to create culture is subverted to sell more soda, tennis shoes, and even politicians.
heh, you're the marketing dude here it seems, you tell me how the game usually works. I just doubt that marketing is only "oh you're looking for product X? here it is!". More often it's like "...don't you need product X to make your life complete?!?"
I recommend that you look for The Century of the Self on the subject of how the consumerism society was created.
I'm not a marketing dude, but i find it fascinating and read about the subject/have known some people involved in small ways. Selling/making ads for weekly newspapers.
I'm obviously simplifying things in that breakdown, nothing is that simple, but the basic point, the heart of it, is true:
The individual wants a way to compete, so the company selling the product provides it.
Captialism! If we weren't competitive there would be no desire for a silly symbol of status. Whether the product delivered actually fulfills our desires is another thing, obviously you can advertise something misleadingly (drink budweiser, hang out with hot chicks!) but it's not like they are releasing a biological weapon to make us socially competitive creatures into the air supply or something.
undoz: can i read legit political philosophy instead of persuasive, carefully marketed mainstream BS?
Dirty people buy toilet paper too, good sir! I don't give a shit what a toilet paper company tells me, I buy TP because I need it. If it wipes my ass, it works, I could care less who made it or why they say I need it.
You don't, actually, NEED to buy TP to stay alive/healthy. humanity got by without it just fine for a very long time. Modern society has influenced you to think it is a necessity instead of a commodity.
You buy it because you want it, and they sell it because there's a market for it.
'need' is a slippery slope. Where do you draw the line on what you can get by without?
So what if Bob loves playing farmville, but he doesn't have any more money left to use to get farmville money, so he sees that he can sign up for a credit card to get points, but this credit card has an extremely high interest rate and outragious fees, but Bob is so desperate to buy a fucking cow on farmville that he doesn't care and gets the card anyway, because he feels like he HAS to. Because games like that are set up to where if you want anything cool you have to use real money because all the prices are so inflated even if you played for weeks you couldn't get enough money just by playing.
Am I the only person that thinks that is fucked up?
Bob is an immature, depressed, dysfunctional individual. What if he NEEDS to go to work to support his family, but he lays in bed all day because he feels like he CANT GO ON instead?
i say the mattress company is ruining his future. Maybe if he didnt have a comfortable bed to crawl back to he'd stand up and face life like an adult!
Farmville isnt the cause of bob being a useless fuckwit, or even a contributing factor, it's a symptom of him being incapable of running his life.
This guys vision of the future is dependent on everyone being a useless fuckwit?
That's not what I want my future to be.
I guess I'll go pull leaves off the trees from now on to save a buck...
W...T....F....?
Maybe Bob should blame HIMSELF. I think the real problem here is, everyone looks for other people to blame for their own mishaps...
Yet personally I feel uncomfortable consuming media where I know "hey they just wanna make me buy something". For the same reason I hate virals. "Hey wait, I didn't just watch an interesting news piece...it's no news piece at all...I wasted my time watching and ad!!!".
Now ads and marketing can be useful and can be entertaining. Yet personally my small simple brain just likes it better when it can shift a gear back and know it doesn't have to expect anyone trying to mess with it on order to sell something getting at my hard earned money, while it tries to have a good time watching a movie or playing a game.
Sure I can choose NOT to play games. Fortunately there are still games out there free of all this.
Also I'm especially not fond when tricks are being used to bring up the ancient predator instincts of having to be competitive.
Sure I do not have to! But then again everyone else is doing it - am I gonna stick out? (not everyone has super big self esteem to totally ignore all of this - otherwise trophies'n'stuff wouldn't work to begin with). See, if the option weren't there in the first place, nobody would miss a thing (did anyone miss WoW achievements before they were introduced? Did they make your life easier or much more fun after they were in WoW?)